Professor Lawrence Lessig writes from Berlin to correct my post from earlier today:
"Hey, fake steve,
so your post is funny, but really wrong. I have never -- ever --
received a dime from Google. The Center the WSJ wrote about has been
around since I came to Stanford (2000). It is funded by Stanford. I
get no funding from the Center; my salary doesn't depend at all on
what money the Center gets. The Center has been critical of Google (w/
r/t privacy, e.g.) and supportive (w/r/t fair use). The fact that
Google gave money to Stanford to support the work of the Stanford
matters as much to my work as the fact that (spectrum mogul) Berkman
gave money to Harvard to endow the chair I had at Harvard. You may or
may not believe that, but the statement, Lessig "is on the payroll of
Google" is just flatly false."
Fake Steve regrets the error. We've amended the original item.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Correction
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7 comments:
Am I crazy, or is fakesteve just a scootch further to the right than real steve? Or maybe not. Maybe real steve has the natural egotism of a billionaire and votes his money while conning the kool kids that he's on their side.
Well done Mr Lessig on sending a friendly message to explain the misunderstandings in Fake Steve's post. It's good to see this kind of thing rather than the legal threats that we so often hear about.
And well done Fake Steve on updating your post, showing that civil conversation is the best way to get results.
Now that's the way to clear your name. America needs more thinking like this and less litigation. Good thing he can take a joke.
Man fakey, everybody reads you! You got juice. Toss some more bait out there and see if you get a bite... maybe something about the odd (fake?) sexual proclivities of Ballmer or better, say something nasty about Cheney, see if you get a nice note. Oh - I know! I think Bush is a Mac head. Cast one in his direction. Be cool to get a friendly visit from Homeland Security.
Note that Lessig was the primary mover behind the effort to use the Supreme Court to overturn the copyright term extension (which was enacted by Congress).
Now he argues that the Courts shouldn't interfere with congressional judgements in this area, and that such litigation is 'chaos'.
I call hypocrisy. Whether it's money driving it or just ideological blindness, it's the same effect.
It's strange to think just how extended the readership of this blog about Bono and Yelptards has become.
If it's him, he's a class act. But we'll still be watching of course! Don't go scoring wheels now on the Center/Google tab.
Lawrence Lessig begin e-mail with "so," and lowercases it? Maybe he should go back to school.
Well, Lessig is entitled to his spin, but it's not a completely unreasonable interpretation that the funding of his center still has some indirect influence on him, despite the fact that it's Stanford and that it preceded his tenure. Stanford get money from its alumni, including Google people; the continued existence of his center depends on Stanford continuing to fund it.
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